There are two dishonest conversations about wokeness, or identity politics if you prefer the less contentious term. The first from conservatives is wearily familiar. For some on the right “woke” is now a synonym for “anything I can’t abide”. Overuse has made the insult meaningless.
On the left, the dishonesty lies in the denial that a new ideology even exists. Nothing has changed, we are told. To be what Conservatives sneeringly call “woke” is simply to be a decent person who cares about the rights of others as progressives have always done.
“They’re calling you ‘woke’ if you call out bad things,” cried the actress, Kathy Burke. “If you’re not racist, you’re woke. If you’re not homophobic, oh, you’re woke. Be woke, kids. Be woke. Be wide awake and fucking call it out.”
At least Burke had the self-confidence to use the word. Elsewhere in leftish circles uttering “woke” is frowned on. The censure comes even though, unlike so many political labels, “Tory” or “suffragette” or “queer,” for instance, “woke” did not begin life as an insult, but as an authentic African-American injunction from the 1930s to stay alert to injustice.
We should be able to accept that, just because conservatives use “woke” as a catch-all insult, does not mean that a distinct and peculiar version of leftism did not grow up in American universities at the beginning of the century and then went on to take over large sections of the rich world’s left in the 2010s.
Among the many achievements of Yascha Mounk’s The Identity Trap (out in a few days from Penguin) is that he unearths the roots of today’s ideology with the patience of an archaeologist. Mounk calls it the “identity synthesis” – he avoids the word woke, perhaps wisely – and does a superb job of showing how unstable and authoritarian the woke worldview was always going to be.
“The lure that attracts so many people to the identity synthesis is a desire to overcome persistent injustices and create a society of genuine equals,” the political scientist writes. “But the likely outcome of implementing this ideology is a society in which an unremitting emphasis on our differences pits rigid identity groups against each other is a zero-sum battle for resources and recognition”.
In other words, it’s all very well building your hopes on a rainbow coalition of marginalised groups. But do you know what to do when the colours of your rainbow clash?
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